I’m looking for any articles that discuss a particular issue with bench pressing that I keep coming across. I have someone making great progress in the dumbbell bench press. She benches 27.5kg dumbbells and is still progressing. However, I keep seeing a technique problem that pops up when she starts to struggle. I don’t know exactly why this issue keeps happening and I’m struggling to find a good source of information about it.
Basically in the very last rep or two, as she approaches failure she lifts her right shoulder off of the bench and pulls it closer to her body. It only really happens near the top 3/4 of the lift and I assume when her tricep starts to fatigue.I assume she is trying to use more anterior deltoid to help her lift the weight for that last rep as other muscles must be fatiguing but am concerned it might be a protection against an old unidentified injury.
I set her up as per ussual bench press accepted posture with scapula together and depressed (chest up and out style posture)and her technique is otherwise 100%. My simply saying “don’t lift you shoulder” and “keep your shoulder on the bench” doesn’t help. She still instinctively does it when the weight starts to fatigue her.
SHe does the same thing in a wide grip pullup by lifting her shoulder towards her ear while the other side remains in normal posture for a wide grip pullup.
Anyone have any ideas or know any reliable articles to look it up?
I bet you are right, sounds like she has hit failure on the tricep and is raising the shoulder to adjust the angle of resistance so she can lock out. She probably is afraid of losing control of the weight and collapsing the dumbell to her chest or face.
Sounds like time to get some unilateral tricep work in her routine if she doesnt already do it.
I dont have any articles for you unfortunately. Perhaps giving her a spot by assisting her elbows up near the top of the ROM would be enough to increase her confidence level. On her strong reps press down lightly on her shoulders and keep instructing her to press her upper back into the pad and keeping her scapulae together.
Thanks for the input Wilderman. She’s not the only person in the gym I’ve seen do this. I see it all the time with other lifters. I’ve already included some more unilateral tricep work in her routine to see what impact it has. I went with dumbbell skullcrushers but am also considering a dumbbell version of close grip bench press. Still struggling to find info on it though. Suprising for such a popular and well researched lift.
Your assumption in tricep failure is probably right. I used to actually so the same thing on the hammer strength incline sometimes.
My thinking was/is that it is just the same as when someone swings the bar up using their back while doing curls. It is just a different form of cheat reps.
It could be a host of things, weak tricep among them. A lot of people believe they are pressing the bar away from them and focus on that action, which often leads to the desire to protract the shoulders at the end of the ROM.
If you haven’t already done so, you might try cuing her to push her shoulders back into the bench and push herself away from the bar. The visualization is that she is trying to break the bench with her back and that the bar is immovable.
Of course the bar does move but that will help with any protraction she is doing.
I would also switch to a barbell instead of dumbbells for a while and see if that helps, and finally I would stop her short on the sets so she does not do the protraction, as it may be a faulty motor program. As soon as you see her start to shift, stop the set, in an effort to retrain her neuromuscularly.
Finally my guess is the side she is rolling up, her right side, is her weak side (even if she is right handed), so to make up for that if you want you can do an extra set or two just with the right side (again focusing on good form) with DB’s.
Don’t know if those will help, hopefully they will. Good luck with it.
I actually have this same exact problem. The side that does it is the side with the bigger pec (stronger chest) but smaller tricep. Usually, when lifting, I can feel the opposite tricep a little more and the side with the weak tricep gives out first.
I’ve tried telling myself to stop it, but the only way to do that is physically stop the set.
In this case, as mentioned above, I think the barbell would be a better bet maybe every other weak (I know it hurts my shoulders sometimes). Otherwise, making sure the weight can definitely be handled for that weight is the next best bet.
I usually only do it when going for progress from the week before and it doesn’t arise until I tried to up the weight/reps again.
Thanks for the input guys. I like the suggetion of vissualising a push into the bench. I’ll see if that idea helps keep the scapula in the proper position.
It’s a bit tricky knowing when to cut the set short as there is no warning or cues to indicate that she’s about to do it. Very often the preceeding rep can actually look pretty cruisy and she isn’t struggling…yet she still lifts her shoulder without warning.
I have been stopping the set short of failure to avoid this becoming a habit and may just stay at the same weight for a few weeks/change exercises to see if we can then slowly step up again without a repeat. I’ll let you know how we go.
It could also be a problem with scapular stabitily, the fact that she does it during pull ups too makes me think that it might be more to do with that then triceps weakness.
Do you do plenty of rows in her program? and if so, does she use good form or does she hunch or allow the shoulders to rotate forward?
Try some scapular pushups and pullups.
[quote]Doyle wrote:
It could also be a problem with scapular stabitily, the fact that she does it during pull ups too makes me think that it might be more to do with that then triceps weakness.
Do you do plenty of rows in her program? and if so, does she use good form or does she hunch or allow the shoulders to rotate forward?
Try some scapular pushups and pullups.[/quote]
Good advice. She does do rowing movements but is quite tall and lanky. I tried a bent over row with her but found she couldn’t maintain posture with it. Yes indeed she did hunch over but the style of hunch is difficult to explain/describe. It’s more that the posture begine to hunch awckwardly from the hip joint rather than a thoracic arch of the back. It is hard to explain but just looks wrong. Only the taller crowd seem to get this uncomfortable looking posture. Instuction didn’t change the posture so we went with pronated barbell curls with an incline bench, seated cable rows, and one arm dumbbell rows. We get good scapular retraction with those, no hunching.
I have looked into scapular instability and yes, it looks like a possible explanation to her problem. I’ll try to find some more information on a simplistic way to assess wether shoulder instability exists. Thanks for the advice. Looks like it could be helpfull.